1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to marketing and customer service systems, and more specifically, to a system and method for recording and retrieving information, including customer contact information and information regarding the results of each customer contact.
2. Background of the Invention
The ability to target customers likely to purchase products or services and to solicit such sales is a powerful tool in the fields of marketing and customer service. Often, targeting such customers and closing those sales is not a one-time event. Instead, the process requires persistent, yet courteous follow-ups with the potential customer. In cultivating a positive relationship, a customer contact administrator or sales representative must be able to identify a customer's needs, to present those needs to the customer in a clear manner, and to follow up in polite ways to accommodate the schedule of the customer. Thus, with what is frequently a protracted process toward a product sale, the customer contact administrator must maintain accurate and complete records about the customer's interests, about what the customer has voiced interest in, and about the dates and times that are most convenient to the customer. In this manner, the administrator can avoid alienating the customer with too frequent dealings, yet can maintain just enough polite contact that leads to a sale.
Maintaining manual contact records for a few customers might be manageable. However, typically, companies charge administrators with the task of contacting hundreds of customers per month in an effort to obtain as many sales as possible. Faced with such daunting numbers, manual record keeping becomes impractical and administrators look to data storage devices to manage the large amount of customer contact information.
Customer contact administrators originally kept manual records of all customer contacts, sometimes referred to as a contact log or diary. Later efforts used spreadsheet software applications, such as Lotus or Excel. However, these spreadsheets were still essentially manual records that were typed into a computer.
Beyond simple spreadsheets, some employers use database applications to enter contact information on an ongoing basis. At the end of each period (for example a month), an employer prints out the database information and enter totals from the database into a spreadsheet (for example, Excel) to calculate the total number of contacts made for the month, broken down by customer contact administrator. Therefore, to obtain periodic (e.g., monthly) customer contact statistics for performance evaluation purposes, employers have the burdensome task of printing out periodic reports and then rekeying them into new spreadsheets to calculate periodic totals and other statistics.